"I hope it’s a wakeup call for people in upstate New York," said Ed Kinane, a long time activist with the Syracuse Peace Council.

"Very fortunately it crashed into water and not on land. So I hope people think, ‘hmm, it could have been otherwise,'" he said.

The Peace Council is pushing Syracuse lawmakers to ban drone flights over the city, but such a ban would have no effect on military aircraft. The 174th recently began flying their training flights over parts of the city.

Kinane says if this accident helps their efforts, that’s a silver lining.

According to Bloomberg News, the Air Force’s Reaper and Predator drones are among the most accident-prone of its fleet. There are 9.31 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. That's three-times the average of the rest of the Air Force's fleet.

The Air National Guard says the Reaper is safe and they will thoroughly investigate the accident.

Syracuse lawmakers are re-working their proposed ban on the use of surveillance drones over city skies.

A draft of regulations were introduced on the council agenda at a study session last week, but were quickly withdrawn.

New draft federal guidelines out on drone use prompted the re-write. The federal rules will be incorporated into the city's, according to councilor Jake Barrett, who chairs the public safety committee.

Central New York's Air National Guard unit, the 174th Attack Wing, will soon be flying drone training flights over a large portion of the city of Syracuse.

The 174th was granted permission from the Federal Aviation Administration last month to expand its permitted airspace south into Oswego, Madison and Onondaga Counties. The airspace includes the northern half of Syracuse and stretches from Camillus to Fayetteville from west to east.